How is this baby three already?!
We had our best trip yet, celebrating Ash’s 3rd birthday at the new trampoline park at Meadowbrook Mall. This was all of our first time visiting one and we will definitely go again! I’ll give you the lowdown and tips for making your visit more enjoyable, should you decide to go.
- That place is huge. There are so many things to do aside from just the trampolines—a climbing wall, two bouncy houses, one for kids ages 2-5, and an adult friendly one, ninja climbing courses for littles, an enclosed dodgeball court, slam dunk basketball hoops, a small 1v1 volleyball pen, a free fall area, a balance battle beam, and many tumble tracks for jumping and flipping. There is also an arcade, which we didn’t do. With that being said, plan your duration accordingly. We did 90 minutes, but Quinn could’ve lasted for two hours. However, Ash was struggling by the end of our time, so we felt like 90 minutes was perfect for us.
- Parents, don’t skip this. Since we had never been, we didn’t realize there would be observation areas for non participants. I pre-booked and paid online, so we were surprised to find this out. We’re big kids at heart and wanted to do it anyway. Philip and I had just as much fun as the boys did 😊.
- Go early. Due to the drive time, I booked us in at 12:30, which wasn’t an overly busy time, but as time went on, it got more and more packed. Next time I think we’ll shoot for getting there closer to opening time. Even for as busy as it was, we still had plenty of room to play, but I always prefer to be around less people 😅.
- Bring a hair tie for anyone this applies to 🙄.
- Make sure everyone has on a short sleeve shirt 🫠. Ashy got so hot in his sweatshirt and he didn’t have anything underneath of it.
- Prepare to either leave your stuff in a cubby or pay $8-$12 to rent a locker. The locker fee was really the only downside to the entire place.
- If you’re going during a busy time—like a Saturday on the first of the month during tax season 🙃—I would recommend booking your session ahead of time online. I’m not sure what max capacity is, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a wait later on that day.
So much fun! 🤩
Ash had been looking forward to his birthday for weeks. He would wake me up in the mornings and ask me to sing happy birthday to him 😂. I finally decided to make a countdown so he could see how many days were left until it got here. Of course, big brother struggled with sharing the attention with the little, and I had to remind him most days that the countdown was for Ash and to let him remove the ring 🤦🏻♀️. Good thing Ash is an easygoing kid for the most part. Or, at least he was, before he turned three 😅. Three year olds are the freakin worst. I sincerely hope Ash is a less fussy three year old than his brother was 🫠. Quinn’s fussy phase lasted from about 2 months before his third birthday until about 5 1/2. He just hit 5 1/2 two months ago, so it’s been a long ride 😵💫. He still has his moments, but he seems to be calmer for the most part.
🥷 🐢
I’ve always planned birthday parties for the boys and invited all of our family and friends, which requires finding a venue to hold it. Ash’s birthday must be at peak party season because it was a struggle last year booking somewhere for the day and time I wanted. I didn’t want to deal with that this year, so we decided to use the money we would’ve spent on that to do something fun with the boys instead. I wasn’t going to have a party at all, but Quinn guilted me into it 😑. I told them we could have cake and ice cream with just a few friends at our house, so that’s what we did. I liked the simplicity of that option, as well as not getting the onslaught of birthday gifts that having a big party results in. Not that I’m ungrateful, it just creates a lot of stress for me. Not to mention, we have more than enough toys and crap in this house. He still got gifts, of course, it was just less.
He told me he wanted a ninja turtle party, but then changed it to just ninja at the last minute 🫠. Good thing I refused to make a piñata, like Quinn expected 🙄.
I cut the front of the box into puzzle pieces, put them into ninja eggs, and hid them for the kids to find. They had to work together to make the picture, and then I gave them the ninja kids fruit snacks
Purchasing 100 nerf bullets for shooting “ninjas” was a terrible idea 😅.
Ash and Luka sporting their matching beanies ❤️
3️⃣ 🎂 🎁 🎈
Anyway, it’s hard to believe our baby is three. I had a fleeting moment where I was sad that I’ll never have another two year old because I think that is a fun stage. I’ll never have another baby to snuggle either. I don’t really miss that phase though. Life is easier with older littles. I hated being pregnant (and can’t be anymore anyway), breastfeeding was exhausting and overwhelming at times, and I like sleeping, more than the average person, I think 😅. My kids are still plenty attached to me, and Ash can’t walk anywhere without eventually wanting, “Uppa,” 🙄, so we’re only leaving behind the parts that weren’t my favorite 😄.
I mean, that’s not to say that there won’t be more of my less than favorite parts. Like, for example, when Ash chooses to talk about penises at the bus stop while we’re waiting to get the big kids, and the only other adults waiting to get their kids are a dad and a grandpa 🤦🏻♀️. One day Ash asked me, “Do you have a penis?” I said, “No,” with nothing more, hoping to stifle the conversation. No such luck. He said, “You have a ‘gina?” I said, “Uh huh,” while looking around, trying to find something to mention to derail his train of thought. He asked, “Do dad have a penis?” I answered, “Yes, but no more talking about penises right now.”
He’s very interested in other’s genitalia at the moment (maybe he should run for the WV legislature 🤪). He has asked about nearly everyone we know whether they have a penis or not. He also categorizes people as either “Yes, mam,” or “Yes, sir” 😅. He’ll be like, “Sophie is yes, mam,” or “Lincoln is yes, sir.” He still sometimes tells me I’m a nice boy, but I think he has it mostly figured out.
I’ve been watching Iris once a week for my friends, Mollie and John. She is also three, so she’s a good playmate for Ash. I warned Mollie that I cannot be held responsible for the things that my children teach their innocent daughter 😂. I intervened during a penis conversation facilitated by Ash during Iris’ second week here 🤦🏻♀️. They’ve had lots of other interesting conversations.
Ash: “Iris, do you have any cats?”
Iris: “Yeah, one. One eye.”
Me: “Oh, that’s right. What’s its name?”
Iris: “Lefty.”
Me: “I remember that now.”
Ash: “Why does it only have one eye?”
Iris: “The doctor had to work on it.”
Ash: “Why?”
Iris: shrug
Me: “He got hurt and his eye didn’t work anymore, so the doctor had to take it out.”
Ash: “Did the doctor throw the eyeball in the trash?”
Me: “…umm, yeah, something like that.”
Ash: “Is it still there? Can we go see it?”
Me: 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
🥹🥹🥹
Iris cracks me up because she repeats what I say to Ash whenever he’s being silly. He gets “Asher Cole”—ed all day long, so she picked that up. She kept calling him Asher Cole, so he started calling her Iris Cole 😂. That brought a big round of giggles from them both.
One thing I love about Iris is that she doesn’t talk nonstop like my kids do 🤣. She and Ash have been getting along great, it’s nothing like when Quinn is home, and I have to constantly remind people to stop touching each other 🙄. Ash tried wrestling Iris one time and she looked at him like he’d lost his mind. I talked to him and told him she didn’t like it, and I don’t think he has tried it since. She’s getting more comfortable here, though, and if this arrangement continues throughout the summer, I won’t be surprised if she starts tackling people 😅.
We’ve been having lots of fun together!
Taking walks,
Checking out the new swing at the park,
And seeing how high they can go on the old ones.
Iris loves painting,
But she realllllllly loves our trampoline 😄
😄
I love the free labor they volunteer for 😆. We got that mud rain washed off of my car, finally.
I also got my office walls finished 🙌🏻. I’ll show you those in a few 😉.
I was working on removing a shrub that was in my future garden space, and Iris stole my rake to help 😆.
We’ve been to story time at the library every week 📚. Thing 2 was less than cooperative about wearing the headband they decorated for Dr. Seuss week 😑.
Speaking of Dr. Seuss week,
I made a Cat in the Hat themed sensory bin for the first week of March.
Ashy wore his own version 😅. He was very proud of himself for thinking this up.
The week before, I created a birthday themed sensory bin for Ash. I have a whole collection of birthday candles, which I learned last year shouldn’t be stored in the attic that gets over 100° in the summer 🫠. More than half of them were all wonky from the heat, so I didn’t care to sacrifice them for the cause. I was surprised when they all made it out still intact, so there was no need to worry.
Both of these bins were posted to my new YouTube channel, which you can watch here:
And here:
Make sure you like and subscribe 😃😃
Another activity we did was for a lesson on teeth brushing. I created a mouth with teeth using the bottoms of sparking water bottles. I scribbled on them with dry erase markers to represent food, and Quinn used an old toothbrush to clean them off. I put hunks of playdoh between them to teach him about flossing. I felt like we had a good conversation and he learned something.
I created this cutting activity for Ash because he needs some work on his scissor skills. We did this while Quinn was at school, but he later saw these photos and wanted me to make this for him 😆. He always liked doing this, too.
I didn’t get to do too many activities because I was busy working on finishing scraping the wallpaper and then painting the walls of my office. It was the last room on the main floor that still had wallpaper, and I’m so excited to be finished with it! 🙌🏻
The color is supposed to be gray, but depending on the light, it looks blue. Either way, I really like it! Almost anything is better than what was there 😅. Now, I have our bedroom and the bathroom upstairs left to do, and then our entire house will belong in this century 😆.
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